A Dreamers Dream

Surrey - England

"Happy anniversary!" I chirp to my parents, greeting them both with a big hug as Michael leads them into the church hall. Mum greets me with a knowing smile but my dad, as I suspected is totally caught off guard
"This is... I don't know what to say, Maddie.. did you two do all of this?" He asks my brother and me, tears glistening in his faded blue eyes as he holds me at arms length and surveys the room around us, seems he's getting emotional in his old age I think as I take in his greying hair and the deep lines crisscrossing his cheeks, I really should make more time to spend with both my parents, they aren't getting any younger.
"My goodness isn't this something" My mum chimes in. Sensing my discomfort at seeing my dad overwhelmed and trying to distract me "You even followed our wedding colour scheme! Aren't you a peach" She laughs heartily at her own joke as she takes in the multitudes of peach coloured balloons and decorations that I have spent most of the afternoon painstakingly hanging around the venue.
"We wanted you to have a night to remember, forty years is an amazing milestone! Personally, I think you deserve a medal for putting up with Dad all these years Mum, let alone a party" I tell them, taking my mum by the hand and leading her towards the mini version of their wedding cake that my talented cousin Amelia has spent the last week perfecting, the two-tiered beauty may not be quite as grand as the huge four-tiered one they had forty years ago, but it's still stunning to me, Vanilla sponge with white fondant icing and simply decorated with freshly piped peach roses which tumble artfully down the side. This final touch seems to open up my mums' floodgates this time as opposed to dads, and she flings her arms out and embraces my brother and me in one massive family hug. Our faces ending up uncomfortably squished together as my dad joins the moment of affection, wrapping his long arms around mum from behind and managing to just about touch a part of each of us in the process.

Thankfully after this little display, both my parents seem to calm down a bit. They are so happily engrossed in catching up with old friends and family "You even brought Auntie Rena!" my dad had exclaimed as he caught sight of his mothers' sister sitting at a corner table, her walking stick propped up against the wall behind her. That I am able to slip off and help myself to a rather large glass of well earned white wine without anyone calling me away. Everything seems to be going exactly to plan and as pleased as I am that we managed to pull this off. I can't help feeling slightly forlorn at the sight of all the couples surrounding me. Even my baby cousin Clara, who is only just eighteen, recently announced her engagement to her high school sweetheart and is excitedly showing off her ring to anyone and everyone who dares to walk within a two-metre radius of her table. I make sure to give them an extra-wide berth as I go in search of my second glass of wine.

I guess now is as good a time as any to make a little confession as I look around at the assembled guests and over to my parents who are gazing at each other with a look of pure adoration. My confession is, I have never been in anything even closely resembling a long-term relationship. I've had boyfriends, sure. Probably more than I should have done really, especially in my teen years, when I was slightly more 'free' with my favours than I'd ever admitted to my parents. However, they've always taken a back seat to my dreams of stardom, and as I travel so much, maintaining a relationship for anything more than a few weeks has seemed practically impossible. As soon as I start feeling enough attachment to a guy that I debate cancelling a gig in order to spend more time with him, I break it off. So as much as I can recognise the look of love in the eyes of the multitudes of couples slow dancing to my mum and dads wedding song in the middle of the large dance floor, it's not something I've ever felt myself.
It's not that I don't want to find love someday, of course, I do, a nice good looking husband and a couple of cute fat babies sounds lovely! Just, not right now, I have other things to achieve first. My first ever singing teacher once told me that if I really wanted to make a go of this, if I truly wanted to succeed and have a career in the music business, I would have to make a lot of sacrifices along the way and she was right. Looking back, she probably wasn't the best person to have taken life advice from, given that she was in her late sixties when I was having lessons with her and the closest thing she'd ever had to a loving man in her life was her cat, Perkins. But at the time her advice stuck. I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing, it gives us the twenty-twenty vision we can only dream of having at the moment.